Yvonne Busch, who was a touring musician during her early teenage years but returned to New Orleans and became an influential music teacher in the public school system, died Friday at a relative’s home in Westwego. She was 84. Many of her music students in New Orleans schools would […]

Born in New Orleans in 1929 and raised in the historic Treme section of the city, Ms Yvonne Busch who mastered several brass instruments and the woodwinds, became a touring professional by the age of 12, crisscrossing the United States as a member of the critically acclaimed “International Sweethearts of Rhythm” and the “Swinging Rays of Rhythm” two all-female bands sponsored by the Piney Woods Country Life School, an historic African-American boarding school located in Piney Woods, Mississippi.

Ms. Busch provided the foundation for scores of New Orleans finest musicians, who excelled in careers in jazz, R&B and gospel, by teaching them the rudiments of music.

The Life Story of Ms Yvonne Busch documentary has won international recognition by winning the AVA Platinum Award, Hermes Gold Award and a Bronze Telly Award.

To View On Demand the documentary for private use only click link below:

In the African-American community, food is a very important entity in relation to joyful family celebrations. It has also taken us from our darkest moments and brightened them through nourishment for our souls to give us hope for a new tomorrow. As diverse as we are as a people, the celebrated go-to tea cake for family gatherings is as varied as well. While almost everyone can recall a close relative baking this wonderful treat, the ingredients and taste are as different as we are.

In my opinion, the tea cake is the world’s happiest cookie. Mention it, and these two simple words bring back happy, carefree memories of childhood and the beloved bakers, our ancestors that have gone on before us. Almost everyone in the African-American community has had an encounter with a tea cake. Be it a grandmother, older aunt, or just an elderly friend of the family, tea cakes were and are still an integral part of our culture. While today’s generation seems to have strayed away from baking, I have hopes that the desire to bake tea cakes will be resurrected and not lost. There is a need for it and its history to be passed on to future generations.

The tea cake was brought into my life by my beloved maternal grandmother, Lettie Jones Boseman. We all loved her tea cakes, and I would await the phone call from her announcing that I was free to come over and grab as many as I wanted. Thankfully, we lived just around the corner, and my visits did not have to involve anyone else. Therefore, I was able to gobble down as many as I could at 3014 and during my slow walk home. Reaching my destination, I would place the surviving tea cakes on the kitchen table to share with my siblings. The tea cakes, rich with butter, would leave the tell-tale sign of its contents by the round grease stains circling the brown paper bag.

Although Momma’s teacakes were round, I have redesigned my tea cakes in the shape of a heart to express my love to an endearing wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and now, also a great-great grandmother. Hopefully, one of the younger Bosemans will find the joy I have found recreating a simple cookie that is so rich in history and taste.

Annie Malone is recorded as the U.S.’s first black female millionaire. What a very interesting story not known by many.

In the 1920s, 30s and 40s, with the new freedom came business and financial
success for many women in Missouri. One of the nation’s wealthiest
African Americans was Annie Malone, founder and owner of
Poro College (watch video below), a cosmetics firm (view products below) that
started in St. Louis and later occupied an entire city block in Chicago.

Perhaps you have never heard of Annie before. If not, you’re in good company.
Most everyone reading this page has never heard of Annie.

And if you are in the African American hair care or cosmetics industry, Annie is
the “mother” of what you are doing. You are about to meet a remarkable woman…

As the Civil War was winding down 150 years ago, Union leaders gathered a group of black ministers in Savannah, Ga. The goal was to help the thousands of newly freed slaves.

From that meeting came Gen. William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order 15. It set aside land along the Southeast coast so that “each family shall have a plot of not more than forty acres of tillable ground.”

That plan later became known by a signature phrase: “40 acres and a mule.”

After wrapping up his famous march, Sherman spent weeks in Savannah, staying in an ornate Gothic revival mansion called the Green-Meldrim House. That’s where he and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton held their meeting with local black leaders.

The Green-Meldrim House in Savannah, Ga., is where Gen. William T. Sherman held meetings with local black leaders, creating the plan later known as “40 acres and a mule.”Sarah McCammon/NPRhide caption